The Comeback Kiss

by Lani Diane Rich

  Tessa shrugged. “He’s Max.”

  Izzy nodded. “Well, I’m starving. I’m gonna go scam a burger and fries for me and Sosie.”

  “Sosie?”

  “Yeah,” Izzy said, rolling her eyes. “She’s meeting me here so we can pretend to study for our history test but really talk about boys. I told you—”

  Tessa held up her hand. “Yeah, yeah, I remember. Just don’t be home too late, okay?”

  Izzy grinned, jaunted across the kitchen, and launched the door to the dining area open with her hip. “And you and me? Are so gonna talk later.”

  She blew a kiss to Tessa and disappeared. Tessa stared as the door flapped back and forth in her sister’s wake, wondering what the kid was up to. Typically, Izzy’s brand of trouble was a lot like Tessa’s had been. All about the fun, no thought for the consequences. But something in Izzy’s face had set off a warning bell in Tessa’s head, and she’d learned long ago that instinct was the only thing that counted for anything in parenting.

  Or sistering. Whatever it was she’d been doing for the last ten years.

  She grabbed her coat from a peg at the back of the kitchen and pushed out through the side door into the crisp day. The sun was bright enough to make her squint but did little to ward off the harsh chill of the Vermont winter. She stuffed her hand in her pocket and ran her fingers over the set of keys there. She heard a noise behind her and her heart skipped a beat as she twirled around, giving no time for her brain to shut down the fervent wish that she’d find Finn standing there.

  But no one was there. A staccato breeze kicked a plastic bag down the alley between the diner and Astrid’s Laundry and Dry Cleaning. Tessa stuffed her hand back in her pocket.

  Finn wasn’t coming back. He was running away again.

  Which was a good, good thing.

  She was almost sure of it.

  ***

  Finn’s eyes flew open and for a disorienting moment he had no idea where he was. Then his focus gripped on the features of Lowery’s old shack—the shelf with various canned goods, the hodgepodge series of pots and pans hanging from rusty nails in the wall, the old woodstove shooting out warmth from the corner of the room—and the surreality of the past day came rushing back. He sighed, laid back again, and rested his arm on his forehead.

  Even with the midday nap, it had been a long fucking day.

  After the run-ins with Tessa and Joe, Finn decided the only thing to do was hang low in the shack by the lake. He’d done what he came to town to do, and anything else would just be asking for trouble. So he’d hoisted his pack over his shoulder and headed for Lowery’s field. He’d found the shack pretty much the way he’d expected to find it—fully stocked and vacant. He’d made a fire, cooked some beans, and pulled the sleeping bags out from under the bed. That was the last thing he remembered.

  He swung his feet over the side of the old cot and glanced at the woodstove, which was still cranking out the heat. He looked through the window at the sky, drenched orange-pink by the sunset. It was about five-thirty, he estimated.

  If he didn’t think of something soon, he’d be stuck in that shack for the foreseeable future. He’d already called information and gotten three car rental places in Brattleboro; not a one was willing to drive forty-five minutes to drop a car off for him. He hadn’t really expected they would, but it was worth a shot. Now Babs was his only hope, and both her home phone and her cell had gone straight to voice mail, pretty much cinching his suspicions that he’d been punk’d by his sixty-year-old boss.

  Which, if he’d been thinking about anything other than getting that car back to Tessa, he should have seen coming a mile away. For Babs, meddling was a religious experience, and Finn had no one but his own stupid self to blame. He’d confided in her during a moment of weakness, and he’d pay for it for the rest of his life.

  Not that it mattered much now. Damage was done. And he may be stranded, but he was also resourceful. He’d find a way to get a car tomorrow, if he had to hitch all the way to Brattleboro to do it. Then he’d go to Boston, do the favor for Babs’s friends, and double his fee while he was at it. Babs took on these favors to stave off boredom, and always received her payment in the form of donations to charity, but Finn was a mercenary, and after all this hassle, damnit, he was going to get paid, and paid well.

  Not that kissing Tessa had been exactly a hassle. Actually, that had been something of a religious experience in itself. Being stuck in Lucy’s Lake, though? Big. Damn. Hassle.

  He pushed himself up off the bed and grabbed the matches from the shelf to light the lantern, but stopped when he heard a noise outside the shack.

  Christ, he thought, closing his eyes. Can’t a guy hole up in a shack in peace?

  He wasn’t entirely irritated, though. Part of him suspected it might be Tessa; it wouldn’t be unlike her to guess where he’d gone and come looking for him. Of course, that was the same part of him that had him pressing Tessa up against the wall of the drugstore that morning. While he liked that part, it wasn’t the part he wanted doing his thinking at the moment; it had no appreciation for strategy. Still, as he walked over to the door and peeked out the small crack between the warped wood panes, Finn couldn’t entirely squelch the stab of disappointment that no one was there.

  And there was reason #597 to get the hell out of Dodge. He turned and took a few steps toward the lantern, then heard it again. A soft scratching sound, followed by a whimper of some kind. Finn struck the match and lit the lantern, then walked over to the door and pulled it open.

  Staring up at him was the border collie-looking mutt he’d chased out of the burning pet shop that morning. The dog looked up at Finn and wagged its tail.

  “Hate to be the sugar in your gas tank,” Finn said, “but cute doesn’t work on me. The only thing I hate more than birds is dogs. Beat it.”

  The dog stopped wagging its tail but didn’t move. Finn started to shut the door, but the dog stuffed one paw under the door and gave a loud, overly dramatic screech as the door barely slid over it.

  “What the...?” Finn pulled the door back open to see that the dog was just fine.

  “Hey,” he said. “Cheap trick.” He raised his eyebrows. “Nice play, though.”

  Finn moved to shut the door once again, more gently this time, but the dog wouldn’t budge. Finn put some weight behind it and the dog dug in its heels, pushing its side and shoulder against the door.

  Finn glared down at the dog. There was no getting rid of it without hurting it, and it took less energy to let it in than to kick it.

  “Fine,” he said as he stepped to the side of the doorway, allowing the dog passage. “But keep your distance and if you pee on anything, I’m making me a big plate of mutt flambe. We clear?”

  The dog assumed an expression of victory and took its sweet time moving into the room, so Finn deliberately closed the door on a wisp of tail hair to make his point. The dog shot Finn a What the hell, man? look and jumped up on the bed before Finn could stop it.

  Finn grabbed another can of beans and cooked them up in silence, letting the dog finish them off when he’d had his fill. They both sighed, sitting on the bed, staring at the door.

  “So,” Finn said after a while, “is Riker’s Island still the best place in town to hustle pool?”

  The dog looked at him and shrugged. It’s better than sitting around here all night.

  Finn grabbed his boots, which had been getting dry and toasty by the fire for the past few hours, and stuck one foot in.

  “Town full of dog people,” he muttered, pulling the laces tight, “and you had to pick me.”

  Chapter Five

  Babs Wiley McGregor turned up the heat under the large skillet, keeping a watchful eye on the blue flames licking up underneath. Her kitchen and cookware, like everything else in her Manhattan penthouse, was of the highest quality. Surely that counted for something.

  “Okay,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief as she reached for her glass of chilled cha
rdonnay. “Step one: success.”

  She grabbed the remote and pointed it at the small TV/VCR perched in the corner of the room. The tape began to play, and the energetic female chef jumped into action, talking a mile a minute about fresh herbs as she dumped an armful of ingredients on the counter.

  “Goodness,” Babs said, grabbing the remote again and pausing the tape. “No wonder she can make meals in thirty minutes. That woman could perform a triple bypass in thirty minutes.” She glanced down at the recipe printout she’d gotten off the Internet, then poked her head into the bag of ingredients she’d had delivered from the market down the street. “Now, which of you little lovelies are the shallots?”

  Since none of the various bits of whatnot jumped out of the bag at her yelling, “We are the shallots!” Babs grabbed the one ingredient she could immediately identify—the olive oil—and splashed some into the skillet, just like the woman on television. Filled with a sense of purpose, Babs smiled to herself as she took another sip of wine.

  She was cooking.

  Traditionally, the women in Babs’s line didn’t cook. There seemed to be some kind of genetic anomaly that made it not only challenging but dangerous. Her great-aunt Corrine had lost the tip of her pinkie finger in a coleslaw incident and had become a cautionary tale passed down through generations of cook-hiring and takeout-ordering women. But Babs had turned sixty last year, and the world was running short on things she hadn’t tried yet. If she had to risk a little bit of pinkie to maintain some variety, well, damnit, she’d do it.

  She was just about to dip back into the shopping bag when the phone rang.

  “Mom,” Dana’s voice came through the line, “I just got your message. What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Babs said. “Just wanted to call and say hello, see how you were doing.”

  “We’re not pregnant, and we’re not trying right now, Mom. Leave it alone.”

  Babs reached for the bag and poked her nose in. “I’m offended. You’ve only been married for six months. I wouldn’t think about pressuring you for grandchildren yet. But are you sure you’re not pregnant, darling? The women in our family are frighteningly fertile. You were a little piece of serendipity yourself, you know. Your father and I were vacationing in Lake George—”

  “Agh, enough,” Dana said. “And yes, I’m sure I’m not pregnant.”

  “Well, be sure to take that folic acid I sent you, just in case. Which reminds me—do you know of any car rental companies that might deliver a car for me?”

  “How does folic acid remind you—?” There was a short pause, and Babs could practically hear the suspicious wheels in Dana’s mind begin to grind. Not that they didn’t have cause to grind; Babs was the first to admit she had a tendency to get into... scrapes. “Mom, where are you, and are you being held at gunpoint?”

  Babs sighed. “You’re just never going to let me live that down, are you? Anyway, it’s not for me. It’s for Finn. I seem to have inadvertently stranded him in Vermont.”

  Another short pause. Their conversations tended to have quite a few of those. “How do you inadvertently strand someone?”

  “It’s a long story,” Babs said, “but I did, and now I’m in a bit of a pinch. Do you know what shallots look like, darling? They’re not long and green, are they?”

  “Blind leading the blind, Mom; I have no idea. So what are you going to do about Finn?”

  Babs set the long green things aside on the counter. “Oh, I don’t know. Can you believe I can’t find a single car rental place that will deliver a car to Lucy’s Lake?”

  “You’ve been living in Manhattan too long,” Dana said. “They’ll deliver the Hope Diamond in Manhattan if you know who to call. It’s not like that everywhere. Where is Lucy’s Lake?”

  “According to the last person I spoke to, it’s—and I quote—‘forty miles east of the Middle of Freaking Nowhere.’ I tell you, if I had any idea how difficult it would be to get a car to him, I would have gone in a different direction.”

  Dana released a sigh. “Oh, God. Tell me you didn’t strand him there on purpose.”

  “He hadn’t spoken to his uncle, the man who raised him from the age of six, in ten years. Of course I stranded him there on purpose. But it was meant to be only for a day or so, and getting him out is proving to be a bit of a sticky wicket.” Babs held a plastic bag up to the light. “Okay, now those I know are carrots.”

  “You’re not cooking, are you? Remember Great-aunt Corrine.”

  Babs pulled out a bag of tiny, brown onion-looking things. “Who in the world yanked these things out of the earth and decided to eat them? I mean, what would possess a person to do such a thing?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Dana said. “People get weird when they’re about to starve. Back to Finn... what are you going to do?”

  Babs sighed. “I can’t identify the shallots.”

  “Focus, please,” Dana said. “We’re talking about Finn. You can’t just leave him there.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to just leave him there,” Babs said. “What kind of person do you think I am? I’ll bring him a car myself if I have to.” She gave a short laugh as a thought hit her. “Do you know I’ve never been to Vermont?”

  At that moment, a petulant screech assaulted her eardrums. She wheeled around to discover that the skillet had burst into flames.

  “Oh, dear. Big fire,” she said, and dropped the phone. As the alarm wailed on, she calmly yanked the cute little red fire extinguisher off the wall, pulled the pin, and covered her range top with white foam. When she was done, she flicked off the gas, turned the extinguisher upside down, and swung it at the fire alarm, dismantling the horrid thing with one careful blow. She put the fire extinguisher down, wiped her hands on her apron, and picked up the phone to hear both Dana and her husband, Nick, calling her name frantically.

  “I’m fine,” Babs said. “If there’s one thing my people know how to do, it’s put out a kitchen fire.”

  “Mom!” Dana sputtered. “You scared me half to death!”

  “Babs,” Nick’s voice came through over Dana’s; he must have gotten on their other extension. “Are you okay?”

  “Don’t ever say ‘big fire’ and just drop the phone like that ever, ever again!” Dana said.

  “You would prefer I stayed on the phone and burned up in the big fire?”

  Short pause. “Well, no, of course not, but...”

  “Babs,” Nick said again, his voice insistent, but calm. “Are you hurt?”

  Babs puffed some air upward to get a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes. “I’m fine. I have to go; my alarm is wired to alert the NYFD and they’ll be here any minute. If you need me anytime in the next few days, call me on my cell phone. I’ll be leaving for Vermont first thing in the morning.”

  “Vermont?” Nick asked.

  “Long story,” Dana said.

  “Love you both,” Babs said in a singsong voice. “Now, go make me a grandchild.”

  She clicked the phone off and opened the drawer that held her yellow pages, flipping through them as she hit speed dial.

  “Demetrios?” she said when the familiar voice answered. “This is Babs McGregor. Can you deliver the usual?”

  “Absolutely, Mrs. McGregor,” Demetrios said in his thick Greek accent. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Yes, actually,” she said as her fingers traced over the yellow pages to Automobile Rentals. “Can you recommend a good car rental place?”

  ***

  “No dogs.”

  Finn glanced at the bartender, a big, hulking guy he didn’t recognize, and decided to name him Surly. “What?”

  Surly jerked his chin at Finn’s feet. Finn glanced down as the dog shuttled past him.

  “Not my dog,” he said, and ambled toward the bar, watching with mild amusement as Surly zipped out from behind the bar and approached the dog, first trying to nudge it back outside with his foot, then pushing with his hands. Finn had to give the dog it
s due; it managed to hold its ground without resorting to so much as a growl, living on sheer piss and vinegar and the ability to wriggle out of Surly’s grip like a greased pig. After a while, someone in the back yelled, “Let him stay. This place is dirtier than that dog, anyway.” Muttering some parting-shot curses at the dog, Surly returned to the bar, giving Finn a black look as he did.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Pepsi,” Finn said. Surly watched him for a moment.

  “Just a Pepsi?” he asked finally.

  “What, you don’t have Pepsi?” Finn asked, keeping his expression flat as he felt the damn dog nestle down under his bar stool. The bartender muttered something under his breath and poured Finn’s drink from the fountain. Finn spun around on his stool and checked out Riker’s. It hadn’t changed much, still didn’t live up to the toughness of its name. While Riker’s tried real hard to get the dive thing going with the wood-paneled walls and cheap lighting accented by neon beer signs, it was still a small-town bar in picturesque Vermont. Hell, back in the day, Riker’s had been the Sunday afternoon meeting place for the Lucy’s Lake Knit Wits. There was an array of hand-knitted coasters on the tables that indicated it probably still was.

  Finn let his eyes wander over to the pool table, analyzing the possibilities for picking up some extra cash that night. The first pool game he’d ever hustled had been at Riker’s Island, and the first rule of pool hustling was to never hit the same place twice, but since he hadn’t been to Riker’s in well over a decade he figured he might be able to bend that rule just a bit.

  “No chance,” a voice grumbled over his shoulder. He didn’t need to turn his head to know who it was.

  “Bottle of Guinness, Russell,” Joe said as he settled on the stool next to Finn’s. Finn glanced at the bartender.

  Russell? Nope, guy was a Surly if ever he saw one. Finn turned his attention back to the pool table. Three guys. No waiting. The only problem was...